Mrs Doreen Dally was awoken at 8am on Saturday 4th May 1957 by a loud banging noise followed by a woman crying out 'No, Peter! No! Oh, Peter, please.'

After that came a scream. When she looked out of her basement flat she saw the figure of 24-year-old Shirley Marguerite Allen start to emerge from the basement flat opposite her own. Shirley wore a red dressing gown and blood streamed from a head wound.

Shirley had lived with 24-year-old Polish art student Ginter Wiora for the previous six months and she called herself Mrs Wiora. He was an extremely jealous man and had often accused her of having affairs and of posing for pornographic pictures.

The girl tried to leave the flat but was held back and she called out 'Oh, Mrs Dally - help me, please. Peter's gone mad.' Mrs Dally grabbed the girl's arm and managed to pull her into the hallway. She pushed the girl into her own flat and told her to lock the door.

She went to climb the stairs to the telephone when Wiora came out into the hall. He held, crossed on his chest, a Samurai sword. He lunged at the hapless woman and stabbed the sword into her left breast. She managed to run upstairs and, rousing the occupant of another flat, telephone for the police.

The police arrived, in the form of DC Drown and PC Tennyson, and they ascertained from Mrs Dally what had happened. When they descended into the basement they found the door to Mrs Dally's flat open and Shirley Allen lying dead on the floor.

She had died from a stab wound to the chest. The sword, now badly bent, lay on the floor nearby. The door to Wiora's flat was locked. When the policemen listened they could hear the sound of a radio and a low moaning.

They could also smell gas. The policemen broke down the door and turned off the gas. Wiora lay on a bed where he was bleeding from a chest wound and from cuts to his wrists. He was taken to hospital.

He was tried at the Old Bailey on 25th July 1957 and put forward a defence of diminished responsibility. The jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment. He was later removed to Broadmoor.

Real-Crime.co.uk